


The Long Way Home

by elumish



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode: s03e10 The Return Part 1, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3905650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three days after leaving Atlantis, Rodney McKay got into a rental car and couldn’t remember how to drive it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Way Home

Three days after leaving Atlantis, Rodney McKay got into a rental car and couldn’t remember how to drive it.

It wasn’t like he had driven much before leaving for Atlantis; there was nowhere to drive to in Antarctica, and even if there was, he didn’t really like driving. He had a tendency to get distracted while driving, which made the entire process entirely unsafe, and he spent so much time in that lab that he usually just took a taxi. Or slept there, whichever was easier.

What all of this meant was that Rodney McKay, PhD, PhD, who had figured out how to create the gate bridge that had gotten them back to Earth, wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to drive himself back to his amazingly shitty apartment a mile and a half—technically one-point-four-six miles—from Cheyenne Mountain.

A knock on the car window had him jumping, his finger going to a radio that wasn’t in his ear anymore. Then he saw it was Sheppard and rolled the window, looking up at him. “What?”

Sheppard smirked at him. “Having trouble, McKay?”

Rodney considered saying no, but he honestly wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get himself home safely, so he said, “I haven’t driven in a while.”

Sheppard looked at him for a second, then jerked Rodney’s car door open. “Get out.”

Indignant, Rodney snapped, “You don’t get to tell me what to do. We’re not on—” And then the words stopped because they got caught in his throat like the fly he had swallowed when he was seven that wasn’t quite dead yet, buzzing around like it wanted to get out when all he wanted was for it to die.

But Sheppard heard the words, just like Rodney did, and his expression went bleak and pale and a little bit agonized. And Rodney didn’t want to see that look on his face, because it was the look he got when the Wraith were eating people or the Genii had invaded the city or pretty people in impractical clothing told them they needed to leave their home, so he got out of the car, which brought him way closer to Sheppard than he should be when they were in the parking lot of the ridiculously homophobic institution they were absurdly both employed by.

Sheppard shoved him slightly towards the front of the car, and Rodney went, turning as he moved to ask, “What are you doing?”

Sheppard was already climbing into the driver’s seat at that point, looking a bit ridiculous getting into a vehicle smaller than a puddle jumper, so he stuck his head out to say, “I’m driving you.” The ‘what does it look like’ was implied.

“I’m perfectly capable of driving myself home.” But it was a hollow argument, because he was already getting into the passenger’s side and closing the door behind him. “Where is your stuff?”

Sheppard shrugged, starting the car. “Don’t have anything. I donated it all when I left.”

“All of it?”

“This a ridiculous vehicle.” Sheppard pulled out of the parking lot and started driving down the highway, and he should have looked as at ease as he did in any vehicle, but instead he just looked tense, lines around his eyes that didn’t belong. “They should have at least given you a stick shift.”

Rodney fought the urge to roll his eyes. “If I couldn’t drive an automatic, what makes you think I would have been able to drive a stick shift?”

Sheppard grinned at him, and some of the unhappiness left his face. “I thought you were ‘perfectly capable of driving yourself home’.”

Rodney shot him a glare. “Shut up.” And he thought Sheppard’s smirk could have almost lit up a lightbulb.

\--

Five days after leaving Atlantis, the hole in John’s head that had been previously filled by Ancient technology had grown to the size of a golf ball, and he was introduced to his team. Major Christopher Wallace, Captain Dante Brown, and Dr. Arnold Babbis. Babbis was a botanist.

The three of them looked efficient, intelligent, and like they wouldn’t survive a week in Atlantis. Excited, all Babbis wanted to do was look at plants and stop and smell the flowers. Which, to be fair, was what Parrish had wanted to do, but Parrish had earned his right to do that. Everyone on Atlantis had.

Wallace was bright and shiny and like a kid in a candy store, which made John wonder how the hell he had ever become a Major, when all he wanted to know was all about Atlantis. Whether Pegasus stargates felt the same as Milky Way stargates, what flying a jumper felt like, what the Wraith looked like. What setting foot on Atlantis the first like had felt like.

John almost shot him. And then he went to the long-term hotel he was staying at until he could figure out an apartment to live in and threw up until he couldn’t taste tuttleroot soup and ruus wine ghosting across his tongue.

\--

Six days after leaving Atlantis, Rodney was stuck on a military flight to Nevada, and there were no inertial dampeners.

He had forgotten how good at flying Sheppard was, or how good he was relative to everyone else. And it wasn’t just inertial dampeners; he had flown darts and Ancient war ships and driven Rodney’s rental car, and he was a head and shoulders above everyone else. This pilot wasn’t bad; he just wasn’t particularly good.

The marine sitting across the impossibly uncomfortable seat watched Rodney for almost half the flight before speaking. He looked at Rodney the way the marines had looked at him in the beginning at McMurdo, and again every time new ones came to Atlantis, like Rodney was just a body with a brain and not an actual person.

And then he asked, “You one of the new eggheads they’re shipping to Area 51?”

“Do you even have clearance for this?”

The marine smirked at him, and it was wrong because it wasn’t a smirk of someone who knew him. It wasn’t a smirk of someone who understood what there was to smirk about. It wasn’t Sheppard’s smirk. “They don’t let people on flights like this who don’t have clearance.”

Fantastic. This marine, who was maybe twenty-five, thought he was hot shit because he had gotten clearance for some secret information and knew that aliens existed. “Yes, I’m being sent to Area 51. Hence the transport from Colorado Springs to Nevada.”

“Most people wash out, you know. Can’t take the pressure, working with all of this alien technology.”

“I can handle it.”

The marine narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know. You look like a bit of a pushover to me.”

Right. “You don’t survive Atlantis by being a pushover.” The word came out easier this time, only catching for a second in his throat before sliding off of his tongue.

Now the marine looked surprised, and Rodney relished in it, because it wasn’t often that he got to surprise people anymore. Everyone on Atlantis knew what he could do, which he liked because it meant they trusted him—Sheppard trusted him—but he missed this rush of actively impressing people.

“Why’d they pull you guys out?”

These words were harder coming. “The Ancients came back.” And then they shuddered down to the ground so hard Rodney thought his teeth might rattle out of his mouth.

\--

Eight days after leaving Atlantis, John woke up with a blinding headache, threw up, took two Advil, and went to work. Not that he had any work to do, given that Babbis had managed to get himself infected with some sort of alien fungus that was turning him blue and Wallace had managed to simultaneously catch some sort of alien cold.

At least Captain Brown was useful, if not fully prepared for his position. He had managed to keep himself from getting infected by anything in the two times they had gone off-world together, though he always seemed a little uncomfortable stepping through the gate.

After filling out paperwork in his office for a full twenty minutes—it was amazing how much less paperwork there was as a team leader than as military head of an expedition—he gave in and called Rodney.

“What? What? I’m very busy here. Doing important things.”

John leaned back in his chair, something relaxing inside of him at the sound of Rodney’s voice. “McKay.”

“Oh. Sheppard.” The sound of typing came through the phone. “You need something?”

“I’m bored.”

He could practically see McKay rolling his eyes. “What, you can’t deal with not having a city at your beck and call?”

“Nah. The SGC is just too gray.”

“Yeah.” The typing paused for a second. “The desert is a mess of UV rays. I’m getting sunburned every time I walk outside.”

“Don’t you have your special handmade sunscreen?” Because if he didn’t, John was fairly certain he had some packed away somewhere, along with about half a dozen Epi-pens, some power bars, and God only knew what else.

“Yeah. I still burn easily.”

He did. It was actually kind of amazing how quickly he burned, though the last time he had seen Rodney really truly burned, they had just been flying way too close to a star. “At least you didn’t turn yourself blue?”

The typing started again. “What moron turned themselves blue?”

“Babbis.”

“Don’t they give the SGC people the ‘don’t touch anything’ talk?”

“Apparently in a galaxy without much Ancient tech, they’re not as careful with that speech.” Probably because Goa’uld tended not to try to kill you if you looked at it wrong.

The typing paused again for a second, and John had a feeling whether or not Rodney’s fingers were moving on the keys was a pretty good barometer for his emotions at the moment. “How is your new team, anyway?”

John didn’t know what to say—Babbis was like Parrish without the surviving and Wallace was like Ford but not—so he said, “They’re not like you guys.”

And Rodney scoffed and said, “Of course. No one’s like us.”

\--

Sixteen days after leaving Atlantis, Rodney made his first assistant cry. It usually took less time than that, but he was a bit off and hadn’t managed to be quite as acerbic as usual.

“How could you have been so mean?”

Rodney turned his glare on the assistant who was talking to him now, whose name was Kensworth or Kennel or maybe Kramer, and snapped, “Because that’s my job. Because if I don’t make sure you know what’s going on and know what you’re doing, you’re going to blow yourself and everyone else up.”

The man scowled at Rodney. “What’s the worst that could happen to us? None of this stuff is dangerous. Half of them are, what, Ancient paperweights?”

“Just because you think something is a paperweight, it doesn’t meant that it is.”

The man’s scowl grew. “Right, because you know so much about that.”

Rodney shoved away from his desk and stood, his chair spinning off to hit the wall behind him. “The Ancients made things that kill people. The Ancient made a _city full of things that kill people_. If you’re going to keep thinking they’re harmless, or they’re paperweights, or they’re _safe_ , get out of my lab.”

Kensworth-Kennel-Kramer blinked at him. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Get out.” And then Rodney went back to his work, because he didn’t have time for this.

“You can’t do this.”

Apparently he still didn’t get it. “I’m in charge of this section. Consider yourself, as of this moment, reassigned.”

They assistant’s eyes went wide like he finally started to figure out what was going on. “To where?”

“To literally anywhere that isn’t here. You think you’re playing with paperweights? You can be assigned to somewhere where all you get to touch is paperweights. Now get out of my lab.”

\--

Twenty days after leaving Atlantis, John got a phone call from Rodney.

“The doctor tried to give me a lollipop. In what world does that fit under the regulations of your backwards organization?”

John fought the urge to smile at the phone. “He’s probably civilian.”

Rodney took that branch of logic in stride. “A civilian? What lunatic would send a civilian to—” Atlantis. Except he wasn’t in Atlantis, neither of them were, and it didn’t matter that the doctor was a civilian because everyone was going to go home at night to somewhere that wasn’t trying to kill them.

The hole in John’s head grew larger. “What did you do, anyway? Get another hangnail?”

Rodney’s “shut up,” was answer enough.

\--

Twenty-three days after leaving Atlantis, the last of Rodney’s stitches were taken out.

“If you tell me I’m brave one more time, I’m going to shoot you.”

The doctor stared at him with wide eyes. “The damage to your hand—the pain must have been excruciating. You’re lucky none of your tendons were cut.”

Rodney wanted to shout, “The Genii tortured me once, you moron,” and judging by the looks on people’s faces, he actually had. Which was a goddamn shame, because he hadn’t been the one that was tortured, not really. One cut wasn’t torture, no matter how scary it was, but Sheppard, he had been tortured, and now Rodney wanted to throw up, he really did, but he couldn’t do that, so he just walked out of the infirmary and nobody stopped him.

\--

Thirty-three days after leaving Atlantis, John walked into a door hard enough to give himself a concussion. He had gotten good at remembering to open doors, but the hole felt like it had grown to be larger than his head and he hadn’t slept in almost three days, and his eyes had stopped focusing properly.

Carson was the one in charge of checking him, because it was almost nine at night and Dr. Lam had been ordered home by the General after staying on base for almost two days working on something about the Ori that John didn’t particularly understand. He was checking John’s pupil reaction when he muttered, “It’s light switches for me.”

John blinked at him—and the light. “What?”

“I keep forgetting to turn on light switches. Just keep waiting for them to turn on on their own.”

Carson’s ATA gene wasn’t as strong as his, but it was still strong enough that he had been able to think lights on and off without any trouble. “I like supermarkets.”

Carson looked confused for a second, and then he got it. “The automatic doors?”

“Yeah.”

Carson clicked off the penlight, reaching out to pat John on the shoulder. “Well, lad, you’re doing alright. Just try not to walk into any more doors.”

\--

Thirty days after leaving Atlantis, Rodney tried to get laid. It wasn’t a particularly concerted effort on his part; the bar that he went to wasn’t particularly high quality, and he went through three beers—American, but they weren’t the worst beer he had ever tasted—before picking a girl. Or woman, really; she was at least thirty. Short blond hair, blue eyes, pale. Just his type, though he had no idea how anyone with that coloring managing to stay that pale in the godawful desert that was Nevada.

“Hi.”

She blinked at him. “Do I know you?”

“I work around here.” Around being a relative term; they were almost five miles from Area 51, because after the fiasco in Russia he had a rule about not sleeping with people he would have to see on a daily basis. Which he had struggled a bit with following on Atlantis because that meant not sleeping with anyone ever, possibly for the rest of his life, but it had reminded him of just how good a rule that was to have.

She looked him up and down. “I’m guessing you’re not a company person—no suit. Not an accountant for the same reason. Computer science? I heard they all get to go to work in t-shirts and flip flops.”

Rodney looked down at his own clothes, which honestly weren’t that bad—if you weren’t trying to get laid—then looked back at her. Low-cut shirt, tight jeans. “Astrophysics.”

“Huh. Does that mean you’re good at math and stuff?”

Maybe trying to sleep with this woman wasn’t a great idea. But he had already started down this path, and he really did want to get laid, so he gritted his teeth and said, “Yes, that does mean I’m good at math…and stuff.”

She took a sip of whatever artificially pink drink was in her glass. “I was never good at math, myself. I’m a secretary, you know, which mostly just means I need to answer phones and look pretty.” She plastered a bright smile on her face.

“Are you any good at it?”

Her smile dimmed. “I like to think so.” She pursed her lips. “So what, you want to sleep together or not?”

“Not.”

“I’m a good lay, you know.”

“So am I.”

She stared at him for another second, then drained her drink. “Yeah, okay, whatever. Have fun with your math.”

\--

Thirty-four days after leaving Atlantis, John was propositioned by a woman on base. She was a scientist and brunette and he had a feeling she picked him mostly because he actually talked to scientists like human beings.

It was something he had noticed, that people tended not to be great about in the SGC, or at least a lot worse than on Atlantis, because people were always cutting scientists off and degrading them and talking about them behind their backs for _doing science_ , when that was their job. Like if scientists decided to talk about how often airman carried guns indoors, except they wouldn’t do that, because they actually had brains in their heads.

In Atlantis, though, people may not have liked all of the scientists, but they damn well respected them, because in the end of the day, it was scientists who pulled their asses out of the fire or kept them from drowning or made sure that their lights turned on so they didn’t trip over boxes in the middle of the night.

She picked when he was leaving for the night, after his post-mission medical check where they confirmed that he hadn’t in fact been infected by the Ori or the Goa’uld on the uninhabited planet they had just visited, to approach him.

“Colonel Sheppard.”

John held open the door so she could get in the elevator with him, then punched the button to the top floor. “Yeah?”

She smiled shyly at him, and he was struck by the thought that McKay would walk all over her if she ended up in Atlantis, except she wouldn’t, because they weren’t going back to Atlantis, they were never going back to Atlantis, and God, he wanted to be sick.

“Do you want to grab a drink?”

He had tried drinking enough to fill the hole in his head—twice—and then decided that wasn’t going to solve the problem, but that probably wasn’t what she was talking about. “Uh—”

Her smile grew into a grin. “I’m not proposing marriage, Colonel, just a drink.”

He had a policy of not dating people he worked with, but she wasn’t under his chain of command, not like she would have been _there_ , so maybe…maybe she could fill the hole left by things that should have been there but weren’t, things he hadn’t even know existed until they were gone. “Sure.”

“Great.”

And she didn’t fill the hole, and he didn’t sleep with her, but she did remind him that there were people on Earth, too, just not his people, not anymore.

\--

Forty days after leaving Atlantis, Rodney almost quit his job.

“How the _hell_ did one of my people get in a car accident? If they weren’t capable of driving a car, they shouldn’t have been able to get a license. What kind of absurd licensing system do you people have in America that they let people who _can’t drive get a license_?”

The man facing him, who might have been an airman but could have been a civilian or maybe an officer or the goddamn President of the United States for all Rodney cared at the moment, said, “She was driving at night, and from all indicates her car hydroplaned—”

“I know what happened. I want to know why it happened. I want to know why the hell we let people drive cars that can spin out from hydroplaning when we have all of this goddamn Ancient technology around us, and if they could build puddle jumpers we should damn well be able to figure out how to make cars that can be driven when it’s _raining out_.”

“Sir—”

Rodney waved a hand at him. “Get out of my lab. Get _out_. I have work to do.”

And the man walked away, leaving Rodney alone in his lab that was emptier than it should have been, because they weren’t supposed to lose people on Earth, he wasn’t supposed to lose any more people, that was the _point_. That was the point of being on Earth, of the things that they fought for, that people weren’t supposed to die anymore. And he had lost enough people on Atlantis, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he seen enough of his scientists die because they touched something they weren’t supposed to or because something went wrong or because they just didn’t have enough of what they were supposed to?

If he was going to do a job where he lost people, should he be doing it on Atlantis?

\--

Forty-one days after leaving Atlantis, John dreamed that he was a Wraith.

He was leaning over Teyla, his hand splayed across her collarbone, and she was old and Ronon was screaming and he was so hungry.

And then he was leaning over Ronon, and there was panic in Ronon’s eyes, and he was fighting back, but John was stronger, so much stronger, and he was so hungry.

And then he was leaning over Rodney, and he was silent, and that was how he knew it was a dream.

\--

Forty-one days after leaving Atlantis, Rodney got a call from Sheppard.

“You have all of your plans for flight?”

Rodney scowled at his phone. “I’m the smartest person in two galaxies. I can figure out how to get to an airport.”

It sounded like Sheppard was smirking. “Sure.”

“Whatever. I just want to get out of here. Go to real civilization for a while.”

There was dull thunking sound, which was weird, because it didn’t sound like shooting and he couldn’t think of what Sheppard could be throwing. “It can’t be that bad there.”

“I hate it here.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s true.”

The thunking noises stopped. “Look, they gave you everything you wanted. Your own lab.”

With Ancient tech that lit up and didn’t do much else. “Yeah, it’s too big.”

“Hand-picked assistants.”

Except for the one who was dead, and they were safe, they were on Earth, they weren’t _supposed_ to die. “Yeah, sycophants, every one of them.”

“Even your own choice of projects.”

Except for the only one that mattered. “Well, that’s not true.”

“Well, other than going back to Atlantis, I mean.” Sheppard seemed to be able to say the word now, just like Rodney could, and he wondered if it was fading for Sheppard the way it never would for Rodney, softening so he didn’t dream about it at night like Rodney did every night so he woke up with his body thinking he was in Atlantis and his mind knew he wasn’t.

“You know, the truth is, I…” He wasn’t sure if he could say it, not to Sheppard who was practically allergic to emotions that weren’t suicidal stupidity and revenge-seeking.

But Sheppard prompted, “What?”

“Yeah, I don’t—I don’t want to use the term ‘lonely,’ but, uh, there are certain people who…I miss.”

“Me?”

“You?” Yes. But Rodney wouldn’t admit that aloud, so he continued, “You I’m talking to on the phone right now and having dinner with tomorrow, so, not so much.” Even though he had gotten used to seeing Sheppard every day, used to saving the city with Sheppard, and that was a hard high to come down from. “But other people, people who I may never see again…like even Elizabeth. She doesn’t return any of my calls.”

“I know what you mean.”

Right, except Sheppard still got to look at a Stargate, still got to see Carson, still lived in the same city as Elizabeth. “Hey, at least you get to go off-world with a team of your own.” Something Rodney had never thought he would miss until he did.

Sheppard sounded sarcastic when he answered, “Oh, yeah, the best and the brightest. All right, I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t miss it. Hey, you know I—” A click. “Yeah.” It didn’t matter anyway.

\--

Forty-three days after leaving Atlantis, John waited at the airport for Rodney’s flight to arrive, his hands shoved into his pockets to keep from flexing them or, worse, grabbing for a gun that wasn’t there.

There were too many people in the airport, and it was too much like the market on P4X-124 except that it wasn’t like it enough, which was the real problem. It was too gray, too white, too closed, and there were too many people. In case of an ambush, they would be screwed, and a culling would be too easy, except there were no Wraith here, there were no Wraith here, he had to remember it.

When Rodney came down the escalator, backpack on his back, John fought the urge to hurry over to him, to cover his six because Rodney was unarmed and John wasn’t used to seeing that, at least not outside of Atlantis where Rodney could go unarmed in the lab—even if he often didn’t—because John or one of the other soldiers could protect him if necessary.

“You look like hell.”

John nodded. “Nice to see you too, McKay.”

Rodney waved a hand. “Yes, yes, I’m hungry, let’s go get food.”

“Carson got Elizabeth to agree to join us.” They started walking towards the doors, and John took up a position just a little bit behind Rodney so he could cover his six, so he didn’t get to see Rodney’s reaction.

But then Rodney said, “Good, good, that’s good. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been working on.”

That was just like Rodney, and something relaxed in John. “You should probably save the classified talk until we’re not in public.”

“Right.” Rodney’s silence lasted about half a second, and then he said, “You know, you really do look like crap. I would think you would be happy not being shot at every other day.”

“But that was the fun part.”

This time Rodney turned enough that John could see the crooked half-smile on his face. “Well, other than, you know, saving the city and all that. I don’t get to impress people with my prowess by saving them at the last minute nearly enough anymore.”

“I’m sure you’ve figure out how to make up for the lack of opportunities.”

The smile dimmed a little. “Right.” Then he looked resolutely forward. “Right. Onward. I want food.”

And onward they walked.

 

\--

Forty-three days after leaving Atlantis, they went home.


End file.
